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A Reindeer Safari
"I have been all over the world and there is nothing that compares to this.”
- Kent Ellis Lapland Reindeer Safari guest
The best meal of Kent Ellis’ life wasn’t at Maxim’s or Jean Georges. It was aboard The Sampo, an icebreaker in the Gulf of Bothnia.
“We sipped the most incredible salmon soup in cream sauce while this massive ship plowed its own path through slabs of ice,” Kent recalls. “I have never experienced anything like it.”
 Later the ship’s crew would lower a gang plank directly onto the ice for the travelers to disembark onto the frozen surface and feel the frigid sea churning beneath their feet.
“We were given thermal wet suits to put on over our clothes,” Kent says. “Then, we simply jumped into the water and went for a swim. I’ll never forget that.” Kent’s cruise aboard the icebreaker was part of Travcoa’s Lapland Reindeer Safari—a present from his mother for his 40th birthday.
“I have been all over the world and there is nothing that compares to this,” Kent says. “I mean, how many churches have we seen? How many tours have we taken? And yet, for adventure, you just can’t beat this journey.” A dogsled journey through the Lapland wilderness was also on the agenda.
“When we arrived, the dogs were tied to a nearby tree,” Kent recalls. “They were jumping and yelping and literally bending down the tree they were so excited to get running.” And run they did at a clip of more than 15 mph—a speed which Ellis claims sounds less than hurried unless it’s your “but that’s only inches off the snow.”
The dogsled commander steered the pack of a dozen dogs through a winter wonderland that Kent says was “just breathtaking.” “It was like a scene from a Christmas movie,” he claims. “The snow on the trees created shapes I’d never seen before, and the branches bent toward the ground like arrows.” Their dogsled ride led them to a native Sami tent for a wilderness lunch of moose and cloudberry juice spiked with vodka.
 That night Kent slept on a slab of ice in a suite made entirely of ice. Sweden’s famous Ice Hotel is re-sculpted each year from the frozen waters of the River Torne whose pure water and steady movement combine to create the clearest ice possible. “The hotel has 88 rooms and sculptors from all over the world come to design its 22 legendary suites,” Kent says. “My suite was Moonlight Sonata. It featured three-dimensional animals, an ice chandelier lit by fiber optics and a headboard with a round orb that was backlit to make it look like the moon.”
Never in his journey did Kent ever feel uncomfortable or unattended. “Our Travel Director, Yvonne Buheiry, took superb care of us,” he said. “She was the first up and the last to bed. She even knew to have extra beds for those travelers who couldn’t make it through the night sleeping on ice.”
A horse-drawn sleigh ride through the Arctic wilderness and snowmobile riding over a highway system of frozen river tributaries capped off a journey that Kent will not soon forget.
“It is another world for a California boy,” he says. “If you want a winter adventure, this is the journey to take." | 
